


Hope: the second gen fic no one asked for

by guineaDogs



Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clyde's lice, Gen, really weird imagery, the lice capades
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 20:04:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17904740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guineaDogs/pseuds/guineaDogs
Summary: When Travis lost Kelleh, he knew he had to do best for his babeh, Hope. Now, Hope's all grown up, with her own harrowing adventure to get through. Remember the lice episode? Here's the second part that no one ever needed.





	Hope: the second gen fic no one asked for

**Author's Note:**

> i had exactly one weed before i wrote this. no proof-reading, no editing of any kind went into this before posting. i only vaguely remember what i wrote.
> 
> find me on tumblr @ thaumatroping

Some old white dude once described a time as being both the best and worst. It was a dichotomy that definitely didn’t exist: it was clear as the dark curly trees that graced the planet on which she lived. It was the worst of times. It had been the worst since before she hatched. By this point in her life cycle, Hope simply knew that was how things were.

It was also why she bore this name.

Her father wanted the best for her, the best for louse-kind. 

He told her the stories of the place where she was originally laid. Brown trees, with a clear view of the skies and regular water cycles. He told her about how their lack of respect for their world, the mass deforestation they inflicted that caused their world to turn against them. He told her about her mother, his  _ Kelleh _ . He told her about the harrowing tale of how they came to be in this world, living alongside the stronger, broader-bodied lice-folk. 

Travis had hoped for a good place to raise his daughter; he wanted his  _ Kelleh _ ’s death to have some kind of meaning. He still held onto that feeling; Hope could see that. But it slowly faded which each passing day. Over time, this place proved to be less of a paradise.

The days were incredibly short; the nights ten times as long, and the water cycles few and far between. There was a certain stability to that, sure. They were able to have structurally sound architecture, but even the most advanced designs could do nothing for the long serpentine beings that occasionally raked through the forest. 

It was chaotic. There were many theories as to why it occurred, but there were none set in dermis. There was no way to prove who was right or wrong; they could only ever agree that it was going to happen again. 

It caused a worry among the popu-lice. Would there come a time when they would be unable to rebuild? 

This was a question that hung over her head as Hope grew up; as she finished her studies, she felt the weight of it all on her shoulders even more. It was a feeling that surely most young people felt; she was aware of the dangers and environmental concerns and wanted to do what she could to assure that her civilization was using environmental best practices and living sustainably. After all, the way they lived now affected the future.

Her father had repeatedly lectured about the toxic ooze that permeated across their native world, and certainly no one wanted that to happen here. 

“I am going to take some time to myself at the Gorge,” she told her father one night when anxieties of the future plagued her too much. 

Travis paused in his reading of the evening paper. “Well,  _ Babeh _ , I suppose that will be  _ okeh _ . Just be careful. You know the edge of the Gorge can sometimes be  _ slippereh _ .” 

Hope gave her father a good-natured eyeroll. “Dad, I’m not a nit anymore. You don’t have to worry about me so much anymore.” 

Her dad offered a soft smile, the kind that her feel lucky that she had a parent as kind of him. “You’re always going to be nit, Hope. You’re my  _ babeh. _ ”

It was at the crack of dawn that she had her knapsack of snacks ready, and she finished her preparations of setting out. Travelling to the Gorge was going to take most if not all of the day, and she wanted a chance to see what it looked like in the light. It was a sight not often seen, and she wanted to bear witness herself.

The forest was dense as she travelled down toward the Gorge. In the densest parts, she felt like she had to zigzag down. It was wild, more than she ever imagined. She had heard stories of lice getting lost here. If anyone came at all, it must have been true. There was no trace of even a trail. Hope, in that moment, felt as if she wouldn’t mind at all if she got lost there. It was beautiful and refreshing.

The closer she ventured to the Gorge, though, the forest started to thin to a increasingly more barren land. It was similar to back home, except there was no living space. No buildings, nothing. The trees were even shorter. Perhaps it was due to what they called the Trimming, when the treetops were harvested for the Other. 

Hope couldn’t say with certainty. 

In any case, she eventually arrived to the Gorge. It was spectacular; as she peered down the sides, she saw the color discoloration, how it seemed to get darker down to the gaping maw. After a careful study, she settled down to have lunch. She stuck her straw into the blessed dermis, which was a gracious land and provided everything her civilization needed to survive.

Slurping up that sweet red nectar, she ate to her heart’s content. When she finished, she continued her hike around the Gorge. She paused at different points to document, to study, to illustrate. When she finally settled down to camp for the night, to rest and relax, she was directly across from the place where she ate lunch.

She laid out a blanket, prepared to lay down to watch the stars. The sun had set, but reappeared brightly, like a star burning fast and bright. Hope felt blinded, and just as she squinted, she saw one of the serpentines travel to the place where she ate, watching it move its face back and forth against her lunch hole. Almost as if it was itching.

Almost as if it was  _ itching _ ! That was it! It felt like a light went off above her head.

No time could be wasted; she needed to get back to her people. To share this dermis-breaking development.  As soon as she was in the city limits of her civilization, she shouted. “I figured it out! I figured out why the serpents attack!  _ We’re an irritant. _ ”

Well, specifically it wasn’t  _ them _ that was the irritant, it was what they  _ did _ , which Hope was sure to emphasize when she explained it all in depth to everyone so no one had to feel responsible for destroying their world.

There was a lot of hemming and hawing about whether this was something they needed to worry about. Whether it was something that could be discussed generations from now without it affecting life now. Whether it wasn’t a hoax orchestrated by 99% of the world’s scientist, of which she was the 99%.  They couldn’t even decide whether to worry about trying to decide to be alarmed!

Unfortunately, they were so consumed in all of this, they didn’t even see the new adversary that threatened their existence. A pod? A murder? How did one quantify blades, Hope didn’t know, but there were quite a few of them scraping along the thickly cloudy Gorge. It shred the trees, it cleared the landscape, it caused nectar leaks. 

Everyone noticed too late: after the thick clouds slathered them, as the blades were already upon them. It was dreadful. Hope had never seen something so horrific and deadly in her life. The blades tore through their beloved homes indiscriminately. She got caught in the undertow of the clouds. 

It was sheer luck that she lost none of her limbs to the blades, sliding along just out of reach. Her hands slid along the smooth, safer-to-touch parts of the intruder. In doing so, she was able to pull her way up until she reached the topside, pulling herself up to relative safety. 

But that was when it pulled her away, lifting her far above the only place she knew as home. She decided then that the best way to quantify the blades was to refer a group of them as a  _ Raise-oar _ . And as if it knew that she was upon it, it shook her off. She wound up on a cold hard surface that was nothing like her dermis. 

It was just so cold. The coldest she had ever experienced. The solidness below her did not grant her warmth like her home’s. She tried her best to seek warmth, but with each movement, a little bit of her own warmth left her. It made each limb heavier, each muscle weaker, until she couldn’t do any more. 

This was where she was to die. It was a peculiar realization. She supposed she should feel something, feel some way about this. But she couldn’t find that in her. Hope felt fleeting, felt like  nothing. She felt nothing but acceptance, in knowing that this was it, and there was nothing could change that. She supposed she did feel a little sorrow. Not for herself, but for her father. He would never know what happened to her. Was he alive? Was he safe? Did he know that she was fading away, ever so slowly?

That was the one question for which she wanted an answer, but would never receive. Even if she did survive this, she knew she would never see her father or her home again. It wasn’t even in sight anymore, and it was debatable as to whether she was scientifically able to understand object permanence. 

_ Bzzt! _ It was the sound of a flying insect that she had never heard before. She’d certainly never seen a flying insect before, but she knew that was exactly what it was when she saw it.  _ Bzzt _ ! It seemed to move closer to her, intent on doing something to her. What, she could not be sure, just as she could not be sure of what it was trying to communicate to her.

Eventually, it managed to hoist her onto its back. It flapped its wings and lifted Hope off of the cold. Engulfed in a blanket of warmth and love, Hope began to recover, as the insect carried her to her salvation. 

She didn’t know what a  _ Fill-More _ was, but if she were to be asked, she would be certain to say that it sounded like a feast. But she didn’t know, just like she didn’t know that the dermis upon which she landed was that it was actually Filmore.

As she recovered and came to, what she did realize was that this was a second chance. This was an opportunity to survive, to try to make something good come from her life. Alone on this isle, she could study. She could learn to cultivate ways to continue her necessary nutritional needs without being an irritant.

As if that was something possible for her type of parasite.

But in her naivety, she could fulfill the name her father gave her: Hope. 


End file.
